I have been at the beach in OBX all week with my family and some friends. One of my friends is the youth minister at our church and the other is not in the full-time ministry but is a teacher in the church. We have been able to have ample time to discuss Biblical topics and ask questions to each other. The conversations have been cordial, engaging, and stimulating. Of course, though, we are getting into some of the deepest theological and philosophical issues. And why shouldn't we?!?!

In the theological realm one of the hardest things to reconcile is God's sovereignty and man's free will. How is God absolutely sovereign yet man has the ability to make choices? This is one of the hottest topics in christendom and has been for centuries. This blog post is not intended to settle the debate. In no way would I be arrogant enough to think I could settle this age old question in about 500 characters. But as I was doing a devotional through Psalms 139 yesterday it did make me think of something that relates.

After David talks about God searching and knowing him (139:1), knowing where he goes (139:2), and understanding what David will say before he speaks it (139:4) he makes a pretty obvious statement. He says, "such knowledge is too wonderful for me, it is too high, I cannot attain to it." (139:6). This is obviously talking about God's Omniscience...aka God knows everything. King David exalts God and recognizes that he, a simple man, has no ability to grasp what it is like to be God. I think we sometimes need to take the same approach. I am not saying we shouldn't think about resolving God's sovereignty and man's free will or that we shouldn't study such topics. I am saying that we need not forget that in the end we will not understand it all. God is too wonderful for us. It doesn't mean we can't understand SOME things about God it just means we should not expect to understand ALL things about Him. What sort of god would we be worshipping if we could fully understand Him?

Therefore, I have no problem affirming God's absolute sovereigty alongside man's free will while saying it is too wonderful for me to understand. Just because it goes past my comprehension level doesn't mean it goes beyong logic. I don't understand astrophysics or how gravity can bend light but that doesn't mean its illogical. God is AWESOME and His ways are sometimes...ok a lot of times...too wonderful for me.

I don't think it is all that difficult to understand at least one approach that makes at least limited sense of God's sovereignty and man's freewill. A God Who allows most or at least some human decisions to play out in the arena of history does not compromise His sovereignty by doing so. That decision, on God's part, IS and act of sovereignty. That God "allows" this is the key. God is not forced or required to do this, and He can overrule human decision whenever He wants.

If this is the case, it still leaves much to be explored, of course. But it is a coherent explanation that seems to take account of all the information in scripture.

Reply

William Dyer

5/13/2017 07:08:10 am

But God limits himself by giving us free will. That decision is an act of sovereignty but it actually limits his sovereignty too. Idk if I'd say he can override our decisions as much as he can still weave history to perform his will through our decisions.

Reply

Harold Orndorff

5/13/2017 12:36:30 pm

It is odd, and somewhat misleading, to call a sovereign decision not to act a "limitation" of sovereignty. A person who MUST act in every case, even if that person for some reason does not want to act, could not correctly be called "sovereign" without distorting that term significantly.